Re: Experienced Statistician to help decide whether a regression is legitim
- From: Anahita <sputzele@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 17:55:48 EDT
Anahita wrote:
Indeed probably so...& hierarchy constraints (you cannot contradict your
however in the industry it is also the lack of time
superior) that prevents (potentially not so
untalented and even clever) people to take the time
to formalize the problem they should tackle...or that
pushes them to auto-censor themselves..
That's one of the many excuses that was used by one
of the discussants in this group, who had argued and >argued and argued about his invalid use of the >correlation, and finally attempted to flame his own >errors on his superior.
Such instance may indeed happen, bad faith is everywhere..
but occurrences of the contrary are also likely :-)... I have seem an equal number of the ones and the other...
It's NOT a valid excuse to malpractice statistics.
It is true I agree.. however as a devils advocate... some malpractice is really based on "ignorance" (which is bliss!)- and this ignorance is "good faith"...
Yes then one should dig and search.. but not everyone has the mindset of a "researcher"...
Some of this malpractice is a consequence of a lack of modesty as well...
But however I firmly believe that the hierarchy of powers in corporations or elsewhere really brings people to auto-censor themselves....or "fashion trends" or..
I'd be tempted to state that these are the conditions in which all human activity is set...
Moreover distinguishing good from bad in appliedwork is time consuming.. Since most management is
lay-men in stats-i.e. the rationale if it looks like
stats it smells like it.. then it is stats-- is
seldom "invalidated"...
There have been Executive Programs in Business
Schools throughout the country, in their MBA programs >in which ONLY high level managers and
company CEOs are admitted. They are taught not only
how to recognize what is good and what is bad, but >actually DO many of the analysis themselves.
I had no knowledge of that.. and if this is true this is wonderful.. however I see a few points I can state here:
first it does take quite a lot of perspiration to become a mathematician or a statistician.. so going through a few courses if it might enlighten you somewhat doesn't make you all of a sudden a "magus of statistics"..
Second those managers who have/take their spare time to go through these courses might be mostly those who think it matters... (selection bias?)...
So even there.... there would be matter for debate or?
My >co-author and former colleague
Harry V. Roberts of
the University of Chicago had been a strong moving
force in that
program
at Chicago as well as in the movement to educate the
Management.
Send him my belated congratulations for his dedication. The whole thing is certainly a good idea and shows he was persuasive enough.
He
even taught principles management that are much more
management than
statistics.
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/041007/obit-roberts.shtm
l
#> Toward the end of his career, Roberts helped
develop a curriculum
in
#> Total Quality Management at the GSB.
Harry even had succeess in pursuading several major
companies to
REQUIRE their upper level management positions to be
filled by only
those who had several advanced courses in statistics.
Here, with all du e respect, are you sure that this is a good criterion? After all division of labor is about everybody should be doing that for which he is best qualified.. I guess managers should manage and statistician "statisticize"
Applied statistics at least "seems" a field where"every(many)body feels "I" can do it provided "I"
have a good number crunching software.." (less a
problem in more theoretical branches where.... you
have to prove something without a computer.)
That's the common ILL of statistics today.
There I can only agree with you.
That's one reason I find so
many incompetent statistics in this group and the
TOLERANT attitude of the readership.
hmmm that was my reason to leave academia... this "tolerant" attitude to "low or nonsensical" research ...
a real deception to discover this plague there...
They are much more ready to
criticize ME for pointing out the malpractice than >criticizing those who malpractice.
I have not followed the debate. It is thus a courageous attitude of yours to defend and try to point out malpractice... one is seldom rewarded for that. It takes on top a communicator talent
But being human (or pescan?) you know very well how difficult to us all it is to admit that one errs.... so then Mr. Reef Fish, humans remain humans even if dealing with statistics..you cannot expect that those you enlighten do not go through the tortures of realizing that what they believed they knew might have benn illusory..
difficult and that one needs a real talent and quite
In contrast I've always felt applied work is
a bit of rigor to do that..
Of course it does. It is more difficult to be a top
level APPLIED
statistician
than a brain surgeon. If a brain surgeon is
obviously incompetent,
his
patients DIE and is easily observable. :-)
ahahah....
When
applied
statisticians
malpractice and have strong influence on CEOs of
companies, the
effect is not as readily visible. That's why
ECONOMISTS have been
practicing Quackery much longer than statisticians,
and often using the
same malpractice techniques, such as misunderstanding
the SIGNS of
multiple regression coefficients.
yes indeed.
proving that price of assets have been manipulated,
I believe that for some real problems(criminology,
and many others..) "quality statistical treatment"
can bring some light to the debate (while bad
statistical doesn't, or only in the sense that it
points to what should'nt be done)...so I do hope to
get a chance to discuss with such people- as they
exist and have expertise!
debate.. of who is good or bad...it is useless and
Nevertheless I think one should supersede the
brings nowhere..
Companies ALWAYS have the option to hire competent
statisticians to
help do the job their own in-house statistics staff
is incapble of
handling
properly or well.
Well there you are... they do in theory, but in practice.. it is slightly more complex... first you have to understand what kind of specialist you hire, and then screening humans is difficult you know that as well.. and then it takes time to discover that your team doesn't know how to work ( especially if you have not been through the courses listed above...).. which is the case in the issue I am talking about... and then if the hired consultants also fail to "see" the problem...
Another French say says: "avec des si on met Paris en bouteille" meaning that whith a causal chain of "if2s you can even bottle "Paris".. i.e. manage the impossible..
la critique aisée".. art is difficult but critique is
In french there is a say: "l'art est difficile et
easy...
C'est très vrai. L'art des statistiques et de
l'analyse de dta est
difficile.
everywhere, and their advice & knowledge is useful!
There are and will be good people around
which makes it pretty though if you are not
p.s. many books in statistics contradict each other
marinating in the field all the time.
One of the things one learns is how to recognize a
BAD book.
agreed....
One
of the most touted books by sociologists, and often
quoted by
Richard Ulrich as if it were the bible of statistics,
even made such
a BLUNDER as calling "Type II error" as a probability
NUMBER.
The rest of what had been cited from that book were
all statistical
GARBAGE. That explains in part why there are so
many
malpracticing sociologists in statistics.
In any case thank you for your refreshing thoughts and the story of the courses for manager.. the US is always in advance!
.
-- Reef Fish Bob.
I'd very much like to).
To reply to some other poster:
-----------------------------
I cannot walk away from this mess (alas and even if
More I will have to propose something potentiallyimproving (...sic).
treatment" but more sensible...for instance a few
I'll settle to "less (pseudo) sophisticated
well constructed descriptive statistics... at least
it will oblige them to sit down and think and maybe
then they will come up with something better....
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